Words in a Journal
by Angeliz
Summary: Some days after Ryou's death, Anzu begins to sort through his things.
1. Chapter 1

Anzu finds the journal in his room some days after the fact—just long enough that the initial grief has exhausted itself into numbness, but not so long that the lasting ache has burrowed down into her bones. She's taken this time to go through his things, to salvage whatever his dad should not see and steal whatever reminds her of their friendship. She has boxed up his notes, his favorite books, a necklace, a teacup, and one of his shirts when the journal falls from a stack of detritus that borders the space where he used to sculpt. Numb now to his secrets, she picks it up. His writing fills barely a third of the book, with gaps that range from hours to months.

His writing style was always like this: sporadic, sensory, slightly pretentious. Always written for an audience, even in a context so intimate as this. It's like he knew she'd find it someday, and that almost annoys her more than his absence.

Or because of his absence. But right now she's mad at him.

She skips through entries from his college years, particularly those regarding his ex—this isn't a time for past romances—and skims through the ones that date post-graduation, around the time he moved in with her. His thoughts and worries are almost clichéd, yet they're tinged with familiarity, a Ryou-ness that makes them real. His mind was fumbling with the future, was weighted with family, was drifting, unanchored. She touches a place where he's scratched out a word.

His handwriting varies with his moods, she realizes.

The ups and downs are hard to decipher, given the chronological gaps in his writing. Last May is sparse, June is vacant, July and August are a nest of activity. September is given but one for his birthday. The worst of his moods seem generally documented, while the best have not been committed to paper. Here and there, entries are interspersed with his dreams. As Anzu reads, she almost forgets, because everything sounds so much like him, but it's new to her rather than dredged from her memories.

Here and there, he's written about her. Two entries are even addressed to her, suicide notes that he never used. This January was dark for him, evidenced by his half-scribbled thoughts, by the night he gasped out ugly sobs as he curled on the carpet with a knife in his fists, door locked, nose bloodied, eyes swollen and stung. She only discovers it now in his journal, months too late to have any effect. Anzu casts out her mind and tries to remember, but she doesn't know if she'd heard him that night and decided to let him privately cry, or if it took place in the midst of their fight and she'd simply been too angry to bother. Perhaps she hadn't heard him at all, and he'd sobbed himself out in relative silence.

She flips through the pages; she's angry again. He's a selfish boy to have left her like this, one half of a friendship seeking comfort from ghosts.

The final entry comes by surprise, a last burst of dark blue upon lined, pale pages. It does not read like the end of a journal, and she finds it an unsatisfactory farewell. How dare he leave her with something so nebulous? If she hadn't felt the stiffness of his hands, recoiled from his stillness and alien chill, she might yet hope that Ryou lives. But she knows he does not, and so this is unacceptable, despite the goodbye he gave her in person—and even that was an insult, because she still failed.

Anzu closes the book and cries.

Her tears are soft and soundless, mere trickles, for she still cocoons herself in numbness. Yet the ache exists deep down in her gut, rending and grotesque, white-hot with fury. Anzu hates him because she loves him, casts him off because she misses him, defines him by his selfishness because she wishes she had been enough. She _should_ have been enough. He had been enough for her. While she understands the psychology and science of his disease, a textbook is not a best friend's journal, and a measure of chemicals cannot justify his choice.

Ryou is dead. Anzu is alone.

Anzu is tempted to follow his example.

They shared each other's lives so deeply that his absence will probably never be filled, and despite the varied accessories of her life—boyfriend, friendships, job, college, family—she cannot see herself moving past this. The sensitive, ragged edges of her soul will always feel him like a phantom limb. Everything will always remind her, and no one but Ryou would get the references.

She packs the journal into one of her boxes. It's a question for later. Right now, there is work.

...

_6/19/2012_

_Now, here is the thing: I am not qualified to diagnose my own depression, only to observe the depth of my sadness. I am deeply, damagingly, dangerously, alliteratively, adverbially sad more often than I think most people ought to be. Except that it is really not so amusing as all that, nor do I really have it in me to describe it. That is the soul-scraping emptiness of the thing: it is a sadness that inspires nothing but sadness. I cry and I think of maybe dying and I try to find a convenient time to die, but nothing ever really works out. And then there are the people who would probably care and the fear of pain and being not-alive and how would I do it, because I don't want to hurt; that's the entire point, is I don't want it to hurt. And there is Anzu bringing me kakigori when I'm writing about how I think about suicide, and she really wants me to go get help, presumably from someone qualified to diagnose my depression._

_And then the paragraph comes full-circle, because I fancy myself a writer._

_I am so sad, so often, so deeply through my thoughts and emotions that sometimes I have trouble acknowledging anything else. And it is sometimes difficult to hide it under superficial anything else. So there is nothing else, sometimes, just me and the sadness, which would almost be an entity unto itself if it would only leave me the motivation to do something so simple as to think in metaphor. Between the lethargy and the blankness in my mind, it is so difficult even to pick up the pen and write on the topic, which is cause for concern given that I am me. My writing and my figure-work are perhaps my only real recognizable skills, and the sadness encompasses them with no effort whatsoever. Left to my own devices, it is entirely possible that I will die without ever having done an exceptional thing, like writing a novel or pursuing a career. Whether I live with the sadness or die in a stupid attempt to escape it, my existence looms empty and unextraordinary. And the state of my mind is such that I hardly care._

_The sadness leaves little space for anything but itself. I don't even care enough to edit what I am writing. There is nothing, and there is sadness, and sometimes that is all there is, and those are the lowest points I can reach. Nothing, sadness, why do I live, how could I die, would people be all right if I did, why am I here, I cannot move or think or anything. The sadness, the depth and the echo and the dark and the empty and just, just the sadness. No words, just the overwhelming feeling of this thing, this sadness, this unbearable, encompassing sadness; it can't be explained. It all sounds cliché and it doesn't lend accuracy to the observation._

_My hand hurts, I cannot think what to write; I am sad but there is nothing to be done about it in this particular moment. Neither am I qualified to treat my own depression, or at least not in a way that Anzu would find acceptable._

...

Author's note: You're never alone in what you feel. You matter.

If you ever need help, the International Suicide Prevention Wiki has resources worldwide.


	2. November 20th

_11/20/11_

_Dear Anzu,_

_You don't deserve to have to deal with me. I appreciate that you do, but it is more to expect than is fair, for you to be the only person holding me together. You should be able to go have fun without me ruining it by crying and moping about. You should be able to live without worrying about me crying or cutting or wanting to kill myself. None of this is fair to you, in that you are the person I cling to. You can't be the solid one all the time. That's not what our friendship is supposed to be. I absolutely love you, and often you are the one thing keeping me alive, but it is so selfish of me to ask this of you all the time. My life shouldn't be such a weight on yours._

_Thank you for all you do for me, for holding me together all by yourself. I'm sorry for this person I've become. I don't think it was always this way. I'm sorry that I can never be strong enough, that you always feel like you have to be, that I am so selfish and messed up, for what this disease is doing to both of us. I am sorry, and I love you, and I will always, always love you. You are my person and have been, will always be. Thank you for staying and holding on. And for everything, really, all these years._

_All my love,_

_Ryou_

...

Note: I've been thinking of maybe adding some entries from Ryou's journal, just as an extra thing to go with the main piece. Some of them more traditional entries, some addressed like letters, I dunno. It's just a thought, nothing crazy. We'll see how it goes._  
_


End file.
